Monitoring systems on the central LAN for personal and proprietary data – something industry analysts estimate 86 percent of companies must do to comply with one or more regulations, such as GLBA, HIPAA, and Sarbanes-Oxley – is already an enormous challenge. Then consider the extra complexities introduced as this content sprawls to remote offices and partner locations.

The Bottom Line Tablus Content Sentinel 3.0.2 Tablus, tablus.com/ Very Good  8.6 criteria score weight Ease-of-use 9 20% Features 8 20% Management 8 20% Performance 9 20% Scalability 9 10% Value 9 10% Cost: Starts at $15,000 Platforms: Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003; SQL Server 2005; agents run on Windows client machines Bottom Line: Content Sentinel 3.0, a part of Tablus' data-protection suite, introduces grid processing to scan thousands of systems simultaneously for private data or unprotected intellectual property. The distributed approach, temporary agents, and low network impact make this solution effective for organizations with content spread among many remote offices. Twenty-five new Expert Content Blades cover most varieties of confidential information without any policy tuning, thus helping organizations more easily comply with regulations. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

Content Sentinel 3.0, the data-at-rest component of Tablus' data protection suite, accurately identifies sensitive information on file servers, laptops, desktops, portals, content management systems, Microsoft Access databases, and e-mail archives. Version 3.0 debuts several enhancements, with performance and scalability topping the list.

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To scan thousands of computers simultaneously, Tablus now takes a distributed approach. One of your servers runs the Enterprise Coordinator software, which controls Site Coordinators – a small service remotely loaded on a designated system in each distant location; in turn, Site Coordinators manage temporary and permanent agents installed on end-point systems. 

Agents are used by many vendors for evaluating data at rest. That's because they spread the processing load and return only the results of scans or problematic files to the main server (older methods require you to copy all files to a central server for analysis). Content Sentinel is especially network friendly, typically transmitting less than 0.1 percent of scanned data over the network to the master controller. Most significant, Content Sentinel lets you define a grid of machines that work in parallel to analyze large information repositories. Additionally, version 3.0 includes 25 new Expert Content Blades (data-protection policies). In practical terms, this means most kinds of confidential information are covered out of the box, without your having to configure policies.

Nevertheless, configuring your own policies is easy to do, as you can see in this screencast.

Scanning the grid
Deploying my test environment was relatively painless. Only one problem surfaced at the start – one that Tablus support quickly determined was caused by Symantec AntiVirus. With a workaround supplied by Tablus in place, I quickly launched the Content Sentinel Management Console, created Site Coordinators, and then added machines to scan (Scan Groups). Because you can specify systems by name, IP address range, or LDAP groups, large deployments should go smoothly.

Similarly, Content Sentinel's options are straightforward. For example, forms let me check off which of the built-in content categories (such as credit card information or personally identifiable information) to scan for. I could also decide whether agents would be installed permanently on target machines, or only temporarily.

Once the scan completes, Content Sentinel displays a list of files containing sensitive data that you must then evaluate. The evaluation process is aided by several tools, such as grouping results by computer or security category. Simply click on a file, and Content Sentinel explains exactly what triggered the alert, perhaps a credit card number. After reviewing the flagged files, you have the information you need to take the appropriate action, such as quarantining the file (so no one can touch it) or moving the file to a secure area (such as a restricted file share).

Moreover, the Tablus system rapidly found all copies of a particular document throughout my network. This central control and remediation, I believe, is very important when you need to quickly correct high-risk files.